ABS-CBN sues 2 Filipinos in Canada for copyright infringement

ABS-CBN said it has filed a statement of claim in a Canadian Federal Court against Ed Casinillo and Roxy Gonzales for damages of over $5 million for copyright infringement, trademark infringement and enabling and inducing copyright infringement of ABS-CBN’s copyrighted works.

The lawsuit alleges that Casinillo and Gonzales sold set-top boxes that were manually programmed by Casinillo to enable buyers to access hundreds of ABS-CBN’s copyrighted movies and TV shows. On Casinillo’s Facebook page, Gonzales is shown delivering these boxes to his customers.

In a statement over the weekend, ABS-CBN’s AVP & head of Global Anti-Piracy Elisha Lawrence claimed that “Casinillo and Gonzales were taking advantage of ABS-CBN’s free 7-day trial of ABS-CBN’s digital platform, TFC.tv by registering over 223 emails and distributing the usernames and passwords to his customers. These customers were participating in this illegal activity by paying Casinillo and giving Casinillo access to their credit card information.”

“Beware of these operations that are not licensed or affiliated in any way with ABS-CBN,” Lawrence warned. “We will continue to protect customers by shutting these operations down. There is only one genuine ABS-CBN internet subscription service and that is TFC and TFC.tv.”

“We need to put a stop to all these illegal piracy activities that undermine the ecosystem that enables ABS-CBN to produce and deliver quality content to millions of viewers overseas and to make sure that the hardworking creative and technical people are rightfully acknowledged and compensated for their work,” said ABS-CBN Canada Country Manager Jun del Rosario.

“What the likes of Filstream, Casinillo and Gonzales do is literally rob from this ecosystem of content creators, pretend to own the content, and scam customers by making money off that content,” he said.

David Lipkus, counsel for ABS-CBN in Canada, stated that the law in Canada is clear that providing services primarily for the purpose of enabling acts of copyright infringement is not allowed.